Kingdom Hearts - Dearly Beloved / Hikari Cover

[Xanibunib]

Hey guys, just finished making another video for YouTube! I know everyone and their mother has done this one but my best friend wanted me to do it for her so I took a jab at it.

So here's the

.

and here's the Sound Cloud.

Any and all feed back would be greatly appreciated, thanks guys!

[Nightlasher]

Certainly not bad, and OCRemix definitely needs more Kingdom Hearts lol. The percussion feels a bit too rapid at parts but that might just be me. I do wish there was a little more Dearly Beloved, but it's a pretty good Hikari rock mix otherwise.

[gillstudio]

Hey man, great job! I The fade-in with the piano was a nice touch.

A few points of critique:

I felt like some the notes on the keyboard could have been held out a little longer to sound more natural.. But obviously, that's up to personal taste and opinion.

Also, I feel the lead tone could have better. It sounded a little harsh and bare to my ears.. Maybe try focusing less on the high 'trebly' sound and bring out some more of the mids and possibly add a bit more reverb and help it sit in the mix better.

Just my humble opinion.. Overall, good job! I'm liking it

[Xanibunib]

Right on guys, thank you very much for the feedback. Nightlasher, I agree I probably could have toned down the drums a bit in some of the slower parts of the song. Gillstudio, I'll try working on my lead tone more. I haven't been doing this very long so any feedback or critique I can get is very helpful.

Just finished up doing some tracks in the studio with my metal band so hopefully this coming week I can get another cover done. Thanks again for listening!

[Michael_Lochlann]

Interesting...I think with some work this would be pretty good.

Arrangement:

The performance of the piano in the beginning was a little clunky. Maybe have someone step in and record that for you, since it's so important to the track.

I'm a fan of double kick, and it works pretty well--surprisingly well--on this track. But if you constantly do it, it loses its meaning, so consider changing up parts of it. The drum part right after the grand pause needs some work. I like when the snare comes in, but before that, it sounds wimpy and doesn't drive the beat. For this track, the drums really feel like they are in the spotlight, so you need to make sure they are flawless all the way through.

You need an ending on this, the sudden stop doesn't work.

Production:

I didn't like how the piano sounded at the very beginning with the distortion. I think a moving hi pass filter would do you better for the "nasty to good mix fade-in", even though that's a little overdone. If you stick with the distortion, find a way to get it to sound less harsh. Maybe have a clean copy of the piano, and send it to an aux send with a distortion on it, and have a moving hi pass filter on the distortion. I also think it sounds too dry, so if you can add a little reverb or delay on it, that would help--especially given that the original is delayed.

The lead guitar tone was very harsh on the ears. There's one frequency that's sticking out, I want to say around the 4Khz area, maybe higher. I think if you remove that, your tone will be pretty good. You may benefit from some subtle reverb or delay on that track as well, it sounds very dry and doesn't mesh with the rest of the track.

The rhythm guitar tone sounds okay to me.

The drums sound pretty good mix-wise. You can hear all the elements. They may be turned up a little bit too much, experiment with bringing the entire drum set down a dB or two and see if your guitar meshes with it a bit more. Your hi hat and cymbals sound a little nasty. See if you can get rid of some of that harshness in the 1K-8K range.

[Xanibunib]

Hey, thanks as always for the insightful review Michael! I'll do my best to work out the kinks.

[timaeus222]

The piano sounds strange to me. Not because of the distortion; that's fine. I think the decay on it is rather short, so it sounds very staccato the whole time, so I'm not hearing much dynamic contrast created when shifting to the clean tone.

I don't think the lead guitar tone sounds harsh, but it sounds thin since it's missing some mids. At 1:16 though, there's a small resonance at about 11000Hz coming from the distortion according to my spectral analyzer, so it could be toned down by either EQing it down or perhaps lowering the distortion a little bit. It kind of rings on at 1:12, so you can more easily hear where the resonance is by listening there rather than in the middle of the track.

I think the hi hats and cymbals could use a bit more reverb to sit in the mix. The hi hats also have a bit of an overboost at about 14000Hz, and though the double pedal kick's a little overdone, I think it's fine.

Pretty good cover, man. I don't think there are really many issues with the production. The drums don't need to be flawless, IMO, unless you want them to be.

Edited April 7, 2014 by timaeus222